Mohommad Zahir

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Mohommad Zahir is a citizen of Afghanistan, held in extrajudicial detention in the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in Cuba.^[1] Zahir's Guantanamo detainee ID number is 1103. American intelligence analysts estimate that Zahir was born in 1953, in Ghazni, Afghanistan.

1 Combatant Status Review Tribunal
- 1.1 allegations
- 1.2 opening statement
2 Administrative Review Board hearing
- 2.1 Zahir's responsss to the factors favoring his continued detention
3 References

[edit] Combatant Status Review Tribunal

Combatant Status Review Tribunals were held in a small trailer, the same width, but shorter, than a mobile home. The Tribunal's President sat in the big chair. The detainee sat with their hands and feet shackled to a bolt in the floor in the white, plastic garden chair. A one way mirror behind the Tribunal President allowed observers to observe clandestinely. In theory the open sessions of the Tribunals were open to the press. Three chairs were reserved for them. In practice the Tribunal only intermittently told the press that Tribunals were being held. And when they did they kept the detainee's identities secret. In practice almost all Tribunals went unobserved.

Initially the Bush administration asserted that they could withhold all the protections of the Geneva Conventions to captives from the war on terror. This policy was challenged before the Judicial branch. Critics argued that the USA could not evade its obligation to conduct a competent tribunals to determine whether captives are, or are not, entitled to the protections of prisoner of war status.

Subsequently the Department of Defense instituted the Combatant Status Review Tribunals. The Tribunals, however, were not authorized to determine whether the captives were lawful combatants -- rather they were merely empowered to make a recommendation as to whether the captive had previously been correctly determined to match the Bush administration's definition of an enemy combatant.

Zahir chose to participate in his Combatant Status Review Tribunal.^[2]

[edit] allegations

All of the detainees were supposed to have the allegations against them read aloud at the beginning of their Tribunals. Most of the detainees were offered an opportunity to hear the allegations read out a second time, when they were usually offered an opportunity to hear them again, so they could respond to each one of them in turn. When detainees chose to respond to each allegsation in turn, the allegations were usually included in the transcript.

Zahir's transcript doesn't record the allegations against him, and it doesn't record whether he was offered an opportunity to respond to each of the allegations in turn.

[edit] opening statement

Zahir told his Tribunal he doesn't understand why he is being detained.

Zahir told his Tribunal that, in the dying days of the Taliban regime, he was working in Iran, when a senior fleeing Taliban operative's car got stuck in the mud in front of his house. He said that the Taliban operative talked his wife into accepting some papers. He was angry with her when he got home, and told his Tribunal if he was home he would never have accepted the papers.

He went to the Governor, who arranged for the car and its weapons to be taken into custody. But no one picked up the papers. The Governor told Zahir not to worry about the papers, because the Taliban was finished.

Zahir said he when Russians left he sold all his weapons. The only fighting he had done was against the Russians. He acknowledged that he served as a cook for them, for three months, in the final year of their regime. They wanted him to be a fighter. He was forcibly conscripted. He didn't want to fight, so he told them he didn't know how. He said they told him if he couldn't be a fighter he would have to be a cook. He got out of his military service by paying a 100,000 Rupee fine.

Zahir pointed out that it didn't make sense to imagine he was a Taliban sympathizer. After the Taliban fell, and the Karzai government came into power, he opened a secular school -- something the Taliban would hate.

[edit] Administrative Review Board hearing

Detainees who were determined to have been properly classified as "enemy combatants" were scheduled to have their dossier reviewed at annual Administrative Review Board hearings. The Administrative Review Boards weren't authorized to review whether a detainee qualified for POW status, and they weren't authorized to review whether a detainee should have been classified as an "enemy combatant".

They were authorized to consider whether a detainee should continue to be detained by the United States, because they continued to pose a threat -- or whether they could safely be repatriated to the custody of their home country, or whether they could be set free.

Zahir responded to the factor presented to his Administrative Review Board hearing with a memorandum.^[3]

[edit] Zahir's responsss to the factors favoring his continued detention

Zahir wrote:

"I had no knowledge of weapons caches."
"I'm not Talib and had no affiliation with Taliban."
"I waa a schoolteacher and I graduated from school."
"I never dealt with intelligence and I have never been a spy."
"Prior to [sic] Taliban occupation, I was a civil servant in the Province of Gazni, working for the police department. During the Taliban I left my job and when Karzai took power I resumed my old job."
"I was the only one arrested at my home. No Chief of Logistics was living at my house."